DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE.
[Sidenote: Daniel Defoe (1661-1731).]
The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly remembered as the
author of one book, published in old age. Everybody has read _Robinson
Crusoe_, and knows the name of its author; but few readers outside the
narrow circle of literary students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless
labours as a politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and
novelist.
It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew less about him
than we do. There was a time when he was regarded as a noble sufferer in
the cause of civil and religious liberty. His faults were credited to
his age while his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far
above the time-servers who despised him. He has been praised as a man
courageously living for great aims, who was maligned by the malice of
party, and to whose memory scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says
Henry Kingsley, 'could come up to the standard of his absolute
precision,' and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These words
were written in 1868. Four years previously, however, the discovery of
six letters in the State Paper Office, in Defoe's own hand, had entirely
destroyed his character for inexorable honesty, and the researches of
his latest and most exhaustive biographer,[49] who regards his hero's
vices as virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the
baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession, was for many
years in the pay of the Government for secret services, taking shares in
Tory papers and supervising them as editor, in order to defeat the aims
of the party to which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors
with whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as a plea that
his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir, for this service, posted
among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged High Tories--a generation who I
profess my very soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
and outrageous words against his majesty's person and government, and
his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it; I
am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that
come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them to
put them into the _News_; nay, I often venture to let things pass which
are a little shocking that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow
in the House of _Rimmon_, and must humbly recommend myself to his
lordship's protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how much the
more faithfully I execute the commands I am under.' It would not be fair
to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the
part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an
act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.
Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable
reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who
had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a
more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of
the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a
hose factor in Cornhill, and carried it on until he failed about the
year 1692. Already he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
secured for him a public appointment which lasted for some years. He was
also connected with a brick manufactory at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote
for the press, and showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine
style, which could be 'understanded of the people.'
In 1698 Defoe published his _Essay on Projects_, 'which perhaps,'
Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of thinking that had an
influence on some of the principal future events of my life.'
One of the most interesting projects in the book is the proposal to form
an Academy on the French model. In 1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only
piece he published with his name) entitled _A proposal for correcting,
improving, and ascertaining the English tongue_, in which he suggests
the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the Queen and her
ministers. The idea it will be seen had been anticipated fifteen years
before.
'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe writes,
'has been to refine and correct their own language, which they
have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all
the courts of Christendom as the language allowed to be most
universal. I had the honour once to be a member of a small
society who seemed to offer at this noble design in England; but
the greatness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen
concerned prevailed with them to desist from an enterprise which
appeared too great for private hands to undertake. We want
indeed a Richelieu to commence such a work, for I am persuaded
were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there
would not want capacities who could carry on the work to a
glory equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue
is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of such a
society than the French, and capable of a much greater
perfection. The learned among the French will own that the
comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English
tongue not only equals, but excels its neighbours.... It is a
great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble
to attempt it; and for a method what greater can be set before
us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the French their
due, stands foremost among all the great attempts in the learned
part of the world.'
Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an academy for women
which should have only one entrance and a large moat round it. With
these precautions, spies, he observes, would be unnecessary, since, in
his opinion, 'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to
keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern notion of guarding
women from danger by preventing the access to it, yet he could write:
'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate
part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker, and the great
instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature, to
whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man
receive. And it is the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude
in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the
advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their
minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the
additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a
creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of
sublime enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversation
heavenly.... She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish,
and the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to do
but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'
In verse Defoe published the _True Born Englishman_ (1701), in defence
of King William and his Dutch followers:
'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue,
William's the darling subject of my song;
Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound,
And in eternal dances hand it round.
Your early offerings to this altar bring,
Make him at once a lover and a king.'
The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For William every tender vow
is to be made, he is to be the first thought in the morning, and his
name will act as a charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding
from the terror of the night.
The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that had he been able to
enjoy the profit of his own labour he would have gained above £1,000. He
printed nine editions at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile
twelve surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few pence, a
fraud for which he says he had no remedy but patience. Throughout his
busy life of authorship he was indeed continually victimized by pirates.
While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he were a demi-god, he did
William good service by his pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted
into his confidence.
Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to have been
straightforward; after the accession of Anne he acted a less honourable
part. No fault can be found with his design that year in writing _The
Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that
age until the publication of Swift's _Modest Proposal_, twenty-seven
years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious argument. The
Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen
delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in
the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the
pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic
state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man
addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead
of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers.
'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed,
but he was not earless.
In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released by Harley. In
prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial account of the great storm
commemorated in Addison's _Campaign_. How much of Defoe's narrative is
truth and how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that he
solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines one to
believe that they are not to be trusted, for this was always Defoe's
_rôle_ as a writer of fiction. His first and most deliberate effort is
to impose upon his readers, and in this art he is without a rival.
While in Newgate he began his _Review_, a political journal of great
ability. The first number was published in February, 1704, and it
existed, though not in its original form, for more than nine years.
'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever employed than that of
Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over
more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed
pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement
must be pronounced a great one, even if he had written nothing else. If
we add that between the dates of the first and last numbers of the
_Review_ he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct
works, containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known, the
fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of
his capacity for labour.'[50]
Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition that he should
act in the secret service of the Government, and his work was that of an
hireling writer unburdened by principle. When Harley was ejected he made
himself useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he went back
to Harley, and 'the spirit of the _Review_ changed abruptly.' A more
useful man for the work he had undertaken could not be found. His
dexterity, his boldness, his knowledge of men and of affairs, his
readiness as a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness, fitted
him admirably for services which had to be done in secret.
Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise. He was tolerant in
an intolerant age, he did his best to forward the Union of England and
Scotland, his patriotic spirit was not feigned, his words are often
weighty with wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful
advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable scheme of
social improvement that came to the front in his time.'[51]
With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a wonderful mixture of
knave and patriot.' The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of
workmanship as a man of letters. In _A True Relation of the Apparition
of one Mrs. Veal[52] the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave
at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705_ (1706) Defoe's art of mystification
is skilfully practised.
'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact, and
attended with such circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to
believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone,
in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London as it is
here worded; which discourse is here attested by a very sober and
understanding gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who lives in
Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named
Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and who positively assured him that the whole
matter as it is related and laid down is really true, and what she
herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's
own mouth.'
In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable appearance
of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact that she wore a scoured
silk gown, newly made up, which, as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she
felt and commended. 'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her
indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was
scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of recommending
Drelincourt's volume, _A Christian's Defence Against the Fear of Death_,
then in its third edition. The fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's
story. 'I am unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition"
became a necessary appendage to the book; but think, that since the
eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt has never been
published without it.'
When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and
greatest work of fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he aimed by the constant
reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to
the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of
_Colonel Jack_ (1722), which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,'
Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to
biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his
pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so
insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative
from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into
the worst dens of vice--his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and
convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The
interest felt in _Captain Singleton_ (1720), in _Moll Flanders_ (1722),
in _Colonel Jack_ (1722), and in _Roxana_ (1724), is to be found in the
minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices.
When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone. The atmosphere
the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive
that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating
air of a Shakespeare or a Scott.
A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales
are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The
highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham
thought the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_[53] (1720) a true history, is not to
the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you
claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were
so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas.
Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary novels,' of
which _Roxana_ is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as
much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is
undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope.
Happily _Robinson Crusoe_, on which the author's fame rests, is a
thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one
of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as
extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is
not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age
as in youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate for
the want of a creative and elevating imagination.
_The History of the Plague in London_ (1722) stands next to _Robinson
Crusoe_ in literary merit. Had Defoe been a witness, as he pretends to
have been, of the scenes which he describes, the record could not be
more vivid. It professes to have been 'written by a citizen who
continued all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate Church
and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street.' In
this case, as in others, the circumstantial character of the narrative
led readers to regard it as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his
_Discourse on the Plague_ (1744), quotes the book as an authority.
Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a moralist is
the _Religious Courtship_, also published in 1722. It is the fictitious
history of a family told partly in dialogue, and so written as to
attract the reader in spite of repetitions and of reflections as
praiseworthy as they are commonplace. It appeals to a class whose
attention would not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in
vain, for the book, after passing through a large number of editions,
has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work is unobjectionable,
though not a little narrow, and it is strange that it should have
appeared about the same time as a story so offensively coarse as _Moll
Flanders_.
The most veracious book written by Defoe is _A Tour through the Whole
Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman_, 1724, in three volumes. The
full title of the work is too long to quote, but it may be observed that
the promises it holds out under five headings are satisfactorily
fulfilled. The _Tour_ bears the marks of having been written with great
care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe states that before
publishing the book he had made seventeen large circuits or separate
journeys, and three general tours through the whole island. It contains
curious information as to the state of England and Scotland one hundred
and seventy years ago, and readers interested in our social progress and
the industrial life of the country will find much to interest them in
the traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The love of
mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than forty years later was a
passion unknown to Defoe and to most of his contemporaries. In the
_Tour_ Westmoreland is described as the wildest, most barbarous and
frightful country of any which the author had passed over. He observes
that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,' and the impassable
hills with their snow-covered tops 'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all
the pleasant part of England was at an end.' The _Tour_ exhibits Defoe's
literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the clearest language.
A homely style which fulfils its purpose has a merit deserving of
recognition. For steady work upon the road the sober hackney is of more
service than the race-horse.
Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs, yet, like his own
Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731, owing to some strange
circumstance of which there is no record, died a lonely death at a
lodging-house at Moorfields. He has been called the father of the
English novel, and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale
Steele and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a novelist he
is without refinement, without ideality, without passion; he looks at
life from a low level, but in the narrow territory of which he is
master--the art of realistic invention--his power of insight is
incontestible. Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the
least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy Nature debase
her. For Nature must be interpreted by Art, since only thus can we
obtain a likeness that shall be both beautiful and true. Defoe,
nevertheless, has contributed one book of lasting value to the
literature of his country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary
chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.
[Sidenote: John Dennis (1657-1733-4).]
John Dennis was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College,
Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position
among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with
unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted
in Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his _Essay on Criticism_.
Dennis had written a tragedy called _Appius and Virginia_, and Pope, who
had a grudge against him for not admiring his _Pastorals_, showed his
spite in the following lines:
'But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'
It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects of an
antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in return as a 'young,
squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals,
and the very bow of the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to
thank the good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of
Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute
disposal of him, his life had been no longer than one of his poems--the
life of half a day.'
Dennis's pamphlet on the _Essay_ caused Pope some pain when he heard of
it, 'But it was quite over,' he told Spence, 'as soon as I came to look
into his book and found he was in such a passion.'
The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for many a year, and
the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse.
Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the
poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.
Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in
blank verse called _The Monument_, sacred to the immortal memory of 'the
good, the great, the god-like, William III.'; a poem, also in blank
verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the
_Battle of Blenheim_, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and
sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach--and a poem equally
laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there
are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in
his _Grounds of Criticism in Poetry_ (1704) that 'poetry unless it
pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in
the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize
that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many
sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that
time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a
passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:
'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes
Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,
Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze
On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;
Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light
At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;
Millions behind, in the remoter skies,
Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;
And when our wearied eyes want farther strength
To pierce the void's immeasurable length
Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,
And still remoter flaming worlds descry;
But even an Angel's comprehensive thought
Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;
Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,
Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'
It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse that these
inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages contained in
_Paradise Lost_. Milton describes the moon unveiling her peerless light;
and the poet-critic exhibits in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering
thoughts' about the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
unfortunate.
His tragedies, _Iphigenia_ (1704), _Liberty Asserted_ (1704), _Appius
and Virginia_ (1709), and a comedy called _A Plot and No Plot_ (1697)
were brought upon the stage. _Liberty Asserted_, which was received with
applause due to the violence of its attacks upon the French, although
called a tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism is
so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving one man, to
marry another whom she does not love, if her country deems him the more
worthy.
Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a Pindaric Ode to
Dryden, and the great poet, with the flattery which he was always ready
to lavish on his well-wishers, called him 'one of the greatest masters'
in that kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well as
sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a poet may lawfully
extend.'
It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully opposed one of
the ablest controversialists of the age. In _The Absolute Unlawfulness
of Stage Entertainments fully demonstrated_, William Law attacked
dramatic representations, not on account of the evils at that time
associated with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.' 'To
suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing innocent lust,
sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and throughout the pamphlet this
strain of fierce hostility is maintained.
'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very
ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal
and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the
contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that
what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was
done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture
as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second
commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort
that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry,
he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but
not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against
theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on
others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the
Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so
far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the
instruction and conversion of mankind."'
Dennis's pamphlet, _The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason,
Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years_, was
published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous
calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, _The
Provoked Husband_, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope
wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the
kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the _Dunciad_,
that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being
once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art
had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is _my_ thunder.'
The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of
the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.
After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful
friend adds:
'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,
And shook the stage with thunders all his own!
Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,
Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!
If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,
Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;
If there's a critic of distinguished rage;
If there's a senior who contemns this age;
Let him to-night his just assistance lend,
And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'
Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend
it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of
seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in
which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer
remembered,
'The rising ages shall redeem his name,
And nations read him into lasting fame.'
It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If
praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him
from 'glorious John' alone.
[Sidenote: Colley Cibber (1671-1757).]
Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of
men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more
impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his
satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded
self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof
against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the
mercurial 'King Colley' was not.
Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous
sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the
stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was
Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, _Love's Last Shift_
(1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play,
_The Careless Husband_ (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he
was also successful, and played for £50 a night, the highest sum ever
given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it
was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in
1741, 'and all the world will be there.'
It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber
displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years
after Gay had produced the _Beggar's Opera_, when Pope was in the height
of his fame, when Thomson had published his _Seasons_ and Young _The
Universal Passion_. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running,
but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the
disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope,
'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the
Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who
makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the
appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as
just as it is severe:
'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,
And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;
Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,
For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'
Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works;
there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these
defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively
badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is
odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling
excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult
to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of _The
Careless Husband_,[54] which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's
dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as
elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover
exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to
your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in
the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his
infidelities:
'_Sir Charles._ Come, I will not shock your softness by any
untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a
pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come.
Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot,
shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my
soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire
at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered
heart.
'_Lady Easy._ Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of
long-desiring love--thus, thus to have you mine is something
more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding
joy....
'_Sir Charles._ Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in
doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me;
but remember, I insist upon it--let thy woman be discharged this
minute.'
It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in
the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays
will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and
immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's
dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The
language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to
write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid
moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the
Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has
comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the
fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world
which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.
His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by
many who are not students, is the _Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley
Cibber_ (1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be
very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much
just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about
thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.
[Sidenote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).]
Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest
excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if
the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied
epistle, written with a view to publication, may have its value, but it
cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of
friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches
the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the
chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the
feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and
rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write
badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of
the art.
For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not
wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need
cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully
tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure
destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the
last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently
and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow
and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer
had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much
time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as
family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our
knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a
study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a
striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and
Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale,
and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and
Cowper.
In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already
made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in
interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater
portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister,
Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd
enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be
as good as Madame de Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are,
perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of
their value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary, who may be
said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth
year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty,
but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty
she translated the _Encheiridion_ of Epictetus. She was a great reader
and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices
warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both
with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes
being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of
Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read
in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her _Life and Letters_. She is a
prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several
passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from
decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her
for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed
to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her
daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in
lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which
give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters
written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is
perhaps the best known.
Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her
future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in
order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her
father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her
inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is
impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my
intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming
it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin
myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father]
whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made
answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that
was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should
find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It
was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'
This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters
to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own
views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To
escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in
story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever
afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they
lived apart.
Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said
that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been
more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]
'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my
pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and
stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I
called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass,
and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this
may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We
have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented
with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest
manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the
least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are
over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for
reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are
almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I
can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter
into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this
very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all
regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it
an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am
reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am
very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or
history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by
exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear
low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I
forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'
Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in
trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into
this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner
discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.
[Sidenote: Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).]
Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also
among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered
upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and
during his brief administration did all that man could do for the
benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the
reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an
able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest
in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been
politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking
of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment
under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he
was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of
Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.
On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table
scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue,
practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order
that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's
opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the
noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected
Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he
appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company
as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had
been with all the princes in Europe.'
As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or
Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the
_World_ (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary
reputation is based upon the _Letters_ (1774)[56] to his illegitimate
son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the
young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a
present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The _Letters_, which
Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours,
abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said
of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low
standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son
and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this
it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes
decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he
unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and
secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an
amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper
regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the
elegant pleasure of a rational being.'
Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the
art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any
other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions
to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and
in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their
backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them
again.'
The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was
not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his
marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.
[Sidenote: George Lyttelton (1708-1773).]
George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets
in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses
were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever
school-boy. The _Monody_ on his wife's death has the merit of sincere
feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he
published his _Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul_, 'a
treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to
fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament
as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was
appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published
his _Dialogues of the Dead_, a volume for which he owes much to Fénelon.
This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three
volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had
the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five
times, an amusement which cost him £1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J.
R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'
Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley,
Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to
have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its
beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he
called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.
[Sidenote: Joseph Spence (1698-1768).]
Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later
life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party
animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman,
and to him we owe the little volume of _Anecdotes_ which every student
of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and
hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages,
nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so
delightful. At the same time there is every indication that he strove
to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words.
Johnson and Warton saw the _Anecdotes_ in manuscript, but strange to
say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate
editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 of
_An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey_ led to an
acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic.
Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in
common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he
had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging
disposition are said to be portrayed in the _Tales of the Genii_, under
the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published
his _Polymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the
Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists_. Under the _nom de
plume_ of Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of _Moralities or
Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations_ (1753), and in the following
year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor,
Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office,
comparing him in _A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_ with the famous
linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in
1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was
accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so
well.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] _Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending
from 1716 to 1729._ By William Lee. 3 vols.
[50] Lee's _Defoe_, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity
for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous
catalogue of his publications--254 in number--contains many which are
ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.
[51] _English Men of Letters--Daniel Defoe._ By William Minto. P. 170.
[52] See note on page 248.
[53] There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that
the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may
be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is
not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the
authorship of the _Cavalier_, as a work of pure fiction, would be
equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'
[54] Ward's _History of English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 597.
[55] _Four Centuries of English Letters_, edited and arranged by W.
Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.
[56] These _Letters_ were not published until after the earl's death,
but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first
letter of the series was written in 1738.